The present invention relates to a device for winding strips of photographic film about a film reel disposed inside a housing having a film-guide slot that opens into its approximately cylindrical interior.
The German Patent Publication NO. OS 3 437 222 describes a photographic printer. Negatives on a strip of film from which prints are produced are advanced past a scanner by a film-advance mechanism in the initial stage of the printing process. In the second stage the negatives are introduced individually into a printing point in the opposite direction and the images are projected onto light-sensitive paper. Between scanning and printing the film is inserted into an essentially circular-cylindrical intermediate reservoir. This device works reliably enough as long as the film being processed is as wide as the reservoir. When narrower films are handled, however, they cannot be guided precisely at the sides, and they can twist upon emerging and have a detrimental effect on the overall procedure.
The German Patent Publication No. OS 3 828 978 describes an intermediate film reservoir that eliminates these problems. The film leader is captured by a clip and the film is wound onto a motorized reel. This device is very reliable, although the mechanization and the need to synchronize it with the film advance through the scanning and printing points make it relatively expensive.